


Together We Can Save The World

by queenfanfiction



Series: fakenews_fanfic open thread fills [13]
Category: Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, FNFF OT, prompt!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-27
Updated: 2011-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenfanfiction/pseuds/queenfanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith learns that "stranded" only counts as such when you're left alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together We Can Save The World

**Author's Note:**

> Written for one of FNFF's OT where the prompt was to write a happy ending for an otherwise downer situation. One of the suggestions was getting stuck in an alternate universe, and it got me to thinking... Original post is [here](http://fakenews-fanfic.livejournal.com/1225920.html?thread=32115904#t32115904).

In the darkest back corner of the bar, Keith slumps just a little more than he had been five minutes ago. "Are you _sure?_ " he hisses into the payphone at his ear. "Are you absolutely, positively, six-hundred-and-seventy percent sure—"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Olbermann, but there's nothing we can do." The woman on the other end of the line at least has the grace to sound consoling. "I realize you are a celebrity in your home dimension, but unfortunately your counterpart has successfully transplanted himself into your original place. Unless our Mr. Olbermann decides to spontaneously return, we cannot send you back. The Balance must be maintained."

"Fuck your balance!" Keith feels his fingernails scrape the wooden corners of the phone booth surrounding him, as if the walls are closing in on him second by second. "I need to get _home,_ goddammit!"

"Again, I am truly sorry, but the Balance is a crucial part of keeping time and space from collapsing on itself. When one goes over, one must come back in his place. That is the rule. We dare not disrupt it. Unless your doppelganger chooses to return, we will be unable to help you. Thank you for contacting us, and we wish you a pleasant day—"

"NO! WAIT!" Keith yells, but the representative from the Time And Relative Dimensions In Space Division, Department of Interdimensional Defense and Relations, has already hung up.

Keith slams the payphone back on its hook hard enough to rattle the hinges of his phone booth before dropping his head against the glass wall in front of him. Stuck. That's what he is now, dragged into this only-God-knows-what alternate dimension in his pajamas at four-thirty in the morning local time by an apparently-psychotic mad-scientist version of himself who is hell-bent on taking over the universe, one dimension at a time. And of all the dimensions to start with, it had to be _his._ God _dammit._

 _Looks like the Catholics were right on this one,_ Keith thinks, half-hysterically fighting the urge to laugh himself into a fit. _The world—my world—my OLD world—it might go kablooey before the end of May, after all. Would've been nice if the show could've at least gotten a chance to start, anyway._

His thoughts are interrupted by a light tapping on the doorframe from outside. Keith groans, lifts his head up long enough to pull open the door behind him, and—

"Oh," says a very familiar woman in a gray sweatshirt and jeans and Converses. "Um. Hi, I'm sorry, but—I thought I heard something about trying to get home? If you're interested, I—well, I might be able to help you with that..."

One of the advantages about being stranded in a very-geeky alternate universe, Keith decides, is that in this universe Rachel Maddow is still exactly her usual cheerful, fact-aholic, infrastructure-loving self, except that here she knows all the physics behind saving the world (and all the alternate ones, too) and she isn't afraid to use it. Also, as Keith doesn't learn until later, shortly before the two of them manage to defeat the evil Herr Olbermann once and for all, Rachel just so happens to be straight, single, and one-hundred-percent available.

At the end of it all, when Keith is offered the generous reward of a one-way ticket back to his now-vacated home dimension by the Chief Engineer of this alternate universe himself, Keith doesn't have to think twice.

"Thanks," Keith says, grinning as he throws an arm across Rachel's shoulders and laughing when Rachel pecks a kiss on his cheek in return, "but I think I'm already home."


End file.
